Quotes About Communication

One way to be sure of saying nothing that can be taken amiss is to say nothing at all.

Chroniclers can edit names out as easily as visionaries can noise them abroad.

We think we have sound relationships,' said George, answering the doubt beyond doubt, 'and suddenly there's a word said or a thing done, so shatteringly out of key that you find yourself alone, and know you've never actually touched your partner at any point, or said a word in the same language. And it doesn't always even absolve you from loving, when it happens. That's the hell of it.

The secret to a fulfilling marriage is simple: make the connection work.

Correction without connection yields rejection.

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like.

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like. I have prepared one of my own. I have placed some rather large samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like.

That's a beautiful speech, but nobody's listening. Let's go.

Maintenant que la glace est rompue, causons." (Now the ice is broken, let's talk.) -After shooting into a mirror

One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time and in others' minds.

In a very real sense, the writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratifications, is a curious anticlimax.

One writes to make a home for oneself on paper, in time, in other's minds.

We should not be surprised that we find meaningless noises in the foundation of many old philosophies, and that from them arise most of the old philosophical fights and arguments.

In the rough, a symbol is a sign that stands for something Before a noise, etc., may become a symbol, something must exist for the symbol to symbolize.

Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.

the analogy between the noises we make when these noises do not symbolize anything which exists, and the worthless checks we write when our bank balance is zero

And how much more do we need Korzybski's consciousness of abstracting at a time when so much of our lives are spent absorbed in the highly abstracted and mediated maps rendered by our digital technologies, new media, and online communications?

No reflecting reader can deny that the passing off, on an unsuspecting listener, of noises for words, or symbols, must be classified as a fraud, or that we pass to the other fellow contagious semantic disturbances.

The difficulty is not merely that of destroying old ideas that are false; it is not merely that of replacing them with true ideas that are new; it is that of causing people habitually to associate meanings that are new and true with terms associated so long, so universally, so uniformly with meanings that are false.

Two hours later there was a longer wire from Winston Churchill

often studiously understated language of the U.S. Navy's

Tom McLeod turned to Macklin. "Do you hear that?" he asked.

Shackleton immediately ran back to camp, going from tent to tent shouting

it's been my experience that most writers don't talk about their craft--they just do it